So Far From Home
by PanDaimonia
Summary: Where is home when it has left you? [Implied AragornLegolas]


_Home._

Is he leaving or returning?

The shore draws further away, the horizon turning to smoky blues and greens in the distance, blurring beyond even the recognition of Legolas' eyes. Soon, he must turn his back. He is fortunate, he thinks, that Gimli will not wonder at his reluctance to part with the past. Both have many memories in this land, even if they are of times that are gone, of people that have long since departed this world. Regret is with them always; regret at leaving the only home they have known, and regret that this has become a world they no longer know. An elf and a dwarf—their time here is fading, for a new age has come to which they do not belong.

The world around them has changed, but they have gone on living in it, stretching out the time which has been allotted to them. Legolas' kinsmen are nearly all gone. He has left the south Elves in Ithilien, where they will be content for the rest of their time there. Of those of his people whom he knew well in days before, only the three children of Elrond remain, diminished, like wandering ghosts from time past. Soon, there will be only two left.

When he went to say his farewells to Arwen, he could sense the distance growing between her and everyone else, as she chose to separate herself from the living. Already, she was a woman with her thoughts bent on preparation for her own departure. In the absence of i Estel /i , her hope, her love, she had faded, becoming something without warmth or light. The life was gone from her eyes; her face was pale and her words few.

It was not right, he knows, to go to her thinking that they shared a common pain. Her sorrows are her own, just as his losses belong to him alone. While Aragorn lived, they had not been able to share him easily; in death, their grief still separates them. The few words they had exchanged said little and signified less. In the end, what mattered was that she had lost her great love, indeed the only man she had ever loved, and he had lost a man whom he had never had.

_Could _he lose something that was never his? Such thoughts fill Legolas' mind, but by now he is used to such queries that go unvoiced and unanswered.

So many questions he does not ask, so many questions he does not answer. Why has he, an elf, prolonged his leave-taking for so many years? Is it not natural that he should long for the Undying Lands, that the sea should call to his blood, summoning him to a place he has never seen? The sight of the sea, its wide and wild power, awakened in him a yearning that he has ignored all these years. For Aragorn's sake he has done this, yes. He made a promise, after all, a promise to keep faith in men and their future. He swore that he would stay, though he did not yet understand what force pulled at him. Legolas does not fool himself in thinking that the realization came to him too late, for there was never a right time, never a time when his if-onlys could have been realized…was there?

He chose to honor his bond with this Man over the fate given to him as an Elf. Though he has resisted its draw, the sea has called to him all along. It is a feeling both unfulfilled and familiar, a need pressing on him that he shuns.

Oh, he knows about longing. He knows about the thirsts that cannot be slaked, not if he is to keep his life peaceful and calm, not if those desires can never be fulfilled nor spoken without causing pain. He knows about the words which cannot be said, words that gather like small white stones in his throat. Those few times when they threatened to come forward, something always held them back. He knows there was no right time; the paths of the Elf and the Man who would be king were too different.

Sometimes, when his control slips, Legolas allows himself to wonder, empty thoughts chasing empty dreams. There are things he remembers—the clasp of hands, the warmth and strength in an embrace—that in his weakness whisper to him as more than the simple offerings of friendship that they were.

_If matters had been different…_ But they weren't, and it is folly to look at might-have-beens. Folly to dwell in the pasts of Men, who are so short for this world, whose lights have burnt out already. Even a Man of Glory like Aragorn, son of Arathorn.

_Let me be home for you, if that is what you would like. Let me give you peace, if a man can ever have peace in his life, his time so brief and hurried._ Words given without thought, without reflection on their wisdom, yet words coming directly from somewhere deep within him. In the moment when he gave that promise, he had never felt more closely bound to Aragorn, more willing to share any burden that he had.

Legolas had fulfilled this oath with all his heart—he did not suffer for it, but found joy in it wherever he could. Yet he had followed his own path too, seeing where it would take him, swearing not to regret that often it led him far from Aragorn, far from the true reason he had remained in Middle Earth.

All these years he has kept his promise, he has kept his silence, but now he has lost his home.

One more question is in his mind, but he does not want to answer it. This time though, he cannot escape thinking the few, treacherous words:

Is he leaving or returning?

_Leaving._


End file.
